Leadership by the unqualified

I'm going to ask a question that will undoubtedly be uncomfortable for the 33% of Americans who are still in support of what our current administration is doing:

Why are you content to have people in jobs for which they are manifestly unqualified, and about which they display nothing short of catastrophic ignorance?

Surprisingly, I'm not talking here about Trump himself, although I'd argue that those charges could just as easily be levied against him.  The fish rots from the head on down, as the saying goes.  But here I'm referring to Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, who was interviewed by Lesley Stahl a few days ago on 60 Minutes, the results of which are nearly unwatchable, if you (like me) hate seeing someone completely humiliating themselves in public.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

What's especially appalling about this interview is that Stahl was not trying to nail DeVos to the wall.  In fact, some of her questions strike me as softball.  And DeVos still couldn't give a coherent answer.  As an example, Stahl asked her if, under her leadership, schools in her home state of Michigan had gotten better.  After all, she allegedly got the nomination from Trump because of her work promoting charter schools there, so her influence in Michigan far predates her appointment to the Department of Education.  Here's her answer:

I don't know.  Overall, I -- I can't say overall that they have all gotten better.  There are certainly lots of pockets where the students are doing well.  Michigan schools need to do better.  There is no doubt about it...  I hesitate to talk about all schools in general because schools are made up of individual students attending them.

"I don't know?"  The Secretary of the Department of Education is asked about the current status of schools in her home state, and she says, "I don't know?"  For one thing, how can she have gone into this interview not having at least prepared an answer for this question?  I mean, if there's an expression that means the opposite of "out of left field," that's what this question was.

And she can't talk about schools in general, because they're "made up of individual students attending them?"  What the hell does this even mean?

But those were far from the only problems.  When Stahl asked her if she'd visited any underperforming schools, DeVos answered with a flat no.  Stahl, whose cool, collected persona slipped, betraying a moment of pure astonishment, said, "Maybe you should."

DeVos looked confused, and echoed, "Maybe I should."

Then DeVos tried a salvo of her own.  "The federal government has invested billions and billions and billions of dollars in the educational system," DeVos said, "and we have seen zero results."  Stahl, who unlike DeVos had actually done her homework, said that this wasn't true -- that test scores over the past 25 years had risen steadily.

DeVos gave her a walleyed stare for a few seconds, and said, "What can be done about that is empowering parents to make the choices for their kids.  Any family that has the economic means and the power to make choices is doing so for their children."

"What can be done about that?"  What can be done about what?  Rising test scores?  Heaven knows, we can't have that.  And what on earth did that non-answer have to do with the question Stahl asked?

And on and on it went.  I honestly at some point had my hands over my eyes because I couldn't bear to watch.  But after the video clip was done, and I had recovered from being that long in a state of wince, I started to get mad.  How is this woman qualified to run the Department of Education?  My sense is that she would be out of her depth in a kiddie pool, and the sole reason she is in the position is that she is a multi-millionaire plutocrat who donated to Donald Trump's election campaign.

So, to the conservatives who've read this far: how can you accept this?  This honestly has nothing to do with party.  Betsy DeVos would be drastically unqualified regardless what her political leanings were.  But there she sits, on the Cabinet of the United States, and she does a public interview in which she comes across as a blithering idiot...

... and not a single Republican leader has anything to say about it.

C'mon, people.  At some point sound leadership has to outweigh party affiliation.  It is ridiculous that our country's educational system -- our hope for the future -- is being run by a woman who, in my grandmother's words, "don't have the brains that God gave gravy."

And these sorts of things keep happening, and over and over, not one damn thing is done about it.  All I can say is, I hope that in November, people will remember this and vote out the kiss-ass rubber stampers who are giving Trump and his rich cronies a bye on everything from appointing nitwits to canoodling with porn stars.

Killing public schools

One comment I hear every time budgets for public education are discussed is, "You can't fix the educational system by throwing money at it."

This pisses me off on a variety of levels.  First, there's the sense that funding public schools is randomly "throwing money," as if it's inherently irresponsible to provide adequate resources for educating the next generation of citizens.  Implicit in this is that schools will just waste the money anyhow, that school boards spend their time looking for frivolous ways to spend their state and federal funding.

The worst part, however, is that this convenient and glib little quip ignores the truth of a different adage: "You get what you pay for."  If you want to obtain and retain quality teachers, ensure that they have manageable class sizes that optimize student success, and give them the resources they need to deliver top-quality education, you have to pay for it.

And it's not like if you refuse to spend tax money to fund schools, then somehow the money magically stays in your pocket.  Taxpayers will pay either for supporting schools, or for the consequences of a generation of poorly-educated, disaffected young adults whose career choices are constrained by a lack of opportunities in public schools, or who have chosen to go to college and racked up hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loans that will take decades to repay.

All of which is why the proposed federal education budget is such a travesty.

The Washington Post calls this "Trump's education budget," which is a little doubtful, given that Trump gives every impression of having never written anything longer 140 characters, much less an actual budget proposal.  The specifics, honestly, have Betsy DeVos written all over them.  The Secretary of Education is a staunch believer in federal funding for private and religious schools -- which she refers to as "school choice" -- and for cutting damn near everything else to the bone.

Here are a few of the provisions of this proposal:

• cutting a total of $10.6 billion from the overall budget for education
• cutting funding for college work-study programs by half
• cutting over a hundred million dollars from programs supporting mental health services and programs providing enrichment, honors, and advanced coursework in middle and high schools
• ending a program to provide student loan forgiveness for college graduates who work in public service
• cutting $168 million from grants to states for career and tech programs
• cutting $72 million from programs for international education and foreign language training
• cutting $12 million from funding for the Special Olympics
• cutting $96 million from a program for adult literacy instruction

On the other hand, it:

• expands support for charter schools and private and religious schools by $400 million
• adds $1 billion to programs to push school districts to adopt "choice-friendly" policies

"It’s time for us to break out of the confines of the federal government’s arcane approach to education," DeVos said.  "Washington has been in the driver’s seat for over fifty years with very little to show for its efforts."

Betsy DeVos [image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

DeVos, of course, is in no position to make that kind of judgment.  She has never worked in a public school, did not send her children to public school, and her main claim to fame, education-wise, is pushing a program in her home state of Wisconsin that funneled $2 billion to private and religious schools despite peer-reviewed studies showing that these programs do not work.  And the situation in Wisconsin is by no means unique -- other states have tried voucher systems, and by and large they have been a dismal flop.  Michael Hiltzik of the Los Angeles Times gives one example:

A study released last February by a team of researchers led by Jonathan Mills of Tulane University found that students in Louisiana’s expanded program lost ground in their first two years in the program.  Those performing at average levels in math and reading — that is, at about the 50th percentile — fell 24 percentile points in math and eight points in reading after their first year in the program.  In the second year, they improved slightly in math, though they still scored well below non-voucher students, and barely improved at all in reading.

So let's take those results, and make them national by mandate!  That'd be a great idea!

It doesn't take an expert to recognize the terrible effect that such a diversion of funds has on schools.  You'd think this would be enough for even the most diehard supporter of "school choice" to say, "Oh.  I guess I was wrong, then."

But no.  Data, facts, and evidence have no impact on a doctrinaire ideologue like DeVos, who honestly doesn't seem to give a damn if public schools fail.  In fact, if by her actions public schools do decline, in her mind it will just prove what she's claimed all along; that education in America is in a tailspin.

 Look, I've worked in education for thirty years.  It's not that I think we're perfect.  There's wastefulness, there is misspent money, and I have long decried the increasing focus on trivial content and preparation for standardized tests.  But the solution is not to cut funding to the bone.  Faced with revenue loss, public schools have only one real choice -- reducing staff.  Most of the rest of the line items in school budgets are earmarked or non-discretionary -- school boards have no choice in whether to include them.  The only big-ticket item that boards actually do have control over is salaries.  But since the salary per teacher is set contractually, there's only one option: lay people off.

Which means higher class sizes, cutting of electives, and loss of program.

Not that DeVos would ever admit this.  But look at the actual results of voucher programs and charter schools, nationwide -- not the spin that DeVos puts on it, but real numbers coming from studies such as the ones described by Hiltzik in The Los Angeles Times article linked above.

The conclusion is unequivocal.  And the budget being proposed will, if passed, be a death blow to the schools that can withstand it least -- poor, overcrowded, inner-city schools.

Remember that next time you see Betsy DeVos smile her smarmy smile and say that she's pro-child.

The end of the experiment

Have you heard about House Bill 610?

Introduced by Representative Steve King (R-IA), H.R. 610 is called the "Choices in Education Act of 2017."  Here's the short description:

The bill establishes an education voucher program, through which each state shall distribute block grant funds among local educational agencies (LEAs) based on the number of eligible children within each LEA's geographical area. From these amounts, each LEA shall: (1) distribute a portion of funds to parents who elect to enroll their child in a private school or to home-school their child, and (2) do so in a manner that ensures that such payments will be used for appropriate educational expenses. 

To be eligible to receive a block grant, a state must: (1) comply with education voucher program requirements, and (2) make it lawful for parents of an eligible child to elect to enroll their child in any public or private elementary or secondary school in the state or to home-school their child.

Already there should be some alarm bells ringing, and I haven't gotten to the really bad part yet.  This voucher system allows tax money to be funneled to private institutions (including religious schools), and yet establishes no standards that those institutions need to meet in order to receive these "block grants."  So that's right: your tax dollars might go to support a school where children are taught in science class that the Earth is 6,000 years old and dinosaurs went for a ride on Noah's Ark.  In North Carolina, a voucher program even funds schools that have explicit conditions for religious adherence for a student to be considered for admission.

Further, the bill sets no guidelines for money being provided for homeschooling.  Note that I am not against homeschooling per se: I know several homeschooling families who have made that choice for excellent reasons, and whose children turned out well educated (better educated, in fact, than the average public school student).  However, I've also known families in which kids were kept home out of suspicion or paranoia, and in one case resulted in an eleventh grader finally re-entering public school -- with a fourth-grade reading level.  So simply giving money to homeschoolers for "appropriate educational expenses" without specifying what is meant by "appropriate" is seriously thin ice.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Not only that, the idea of replacing current public school programs with a voucher system has a proven track record of abject failure.  A study in 2016 of voucher-funded private schools in the Milwaukee area found that 41% of those schools failed.  "I do not mean failed as in they did not deliver academically, I mean failed as in they no longer exist," said Michael Ford of the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, who was lead author of the study. "These 102 schools either closed after having their voucher revenue cut off by the Department of Public Instruction, or simply shut their doors.  The failure rate for entrepreneurial start-up schools is even worse: 67.8 percent."

These results are mirrored in other states -- Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania have all seen significant problems with voucher programs, including loss of funding to public schools and dubious results in terms of student success, retention, and college acceptance after graduation.

But as I said, I haven't even told you about the worst part yet.  The Choices in Education Act of 2017 explicitly repeals two bills -- the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 and the No Hungry Kids Act of 2013.

Let's start with the first one.  The ESEA is a wide-reaching piece of legislation that focuses on equal access to education regardless of disability or socioeconomic status, and mandates school accountability, professional development, and support of educational programs.  Provisions include providing financial support to schools serving students from low-income families, assisting schools with the purchase of textbooks and library materials, funding bilingual education and English as a Second Language curricula, and creating or maintaining enrichment programs such as classes for gifted and talented students, Advanced Placement programs, and education in the arts and music.

The No Hungry Kids Act should be self-explanatory, but let me use the description from the bill designed to repeal it:  The NHKA establishes "certain nutrition standards for the national school lunch and breakfast programs. (In general, the rule requires schools to increase the availability of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and low-fat or fat free milk in school meals; reduce the levels of sodium, saturated fat, and trans fat in school meals; and meet children's nutritional needs within their caloric requirements.)"

Yes, you understand all this correctly: the Choices in Education Act of 2017, if passed (and it seems to have widespread support), will trash both of these laws entirely.

One of my education professors in my long-ago teacher training program at the University of Washington called the last 120 years of American public schools "an experiment to test the radical hypothesis that all children can, and deserve to, be given equal access to education."  Through much of our history, this hasn't been the case.  If you were wealthy, your kids got to go to school; if you were not, they didn't.  The result was that poverty was effectively hereditary, and so was all that goes with it; poor access to health care, shortened life span, exploitation in the form of child labor, low-paying jobs with awful working conditions waiting for kids when they become adults because they've been trained for no better.  This bill, should it become law, will tear down an edifice that (while certainly far from ideal) has come closer than humanity ever has to giving all children, regardless of gender, origin, race, religion, or socioeconomic status, a chance to break the fetters of institutionalized class stratification.

This bill is still in the early stages, and it's not too late to fight it.  Call your representatives.  Let them know that should the Choices in Education Act of 2017 become law, it will result in irrevocable damage to our education system.  Tell them that the proposed changes aren't supported by the empirical data, and will accomplish little but program cuts in already-cash-strapped public schools, and further weakening of the wall between church and state through diverting public tax money to religious institutions.

Let them know that the public school system could use reform, but destroying it entirely will have repercussions that will take generations to undo.  Our educational system isn't perfect, but it's an experiment in social equity that can't be allowed to fail.

Nevertheless, we persist

I've found it increasingly hard to be optimistic about the future, lately.

Consider what's happened in only the last two days:

• The stupendously unqualified Betsy DeVos was confirmed as Secretary of Education by a 50-50 vote in the Senate, broken by Vice President Mike Pence's vote in favor.  DeVos's nomination for the position is perhaps best explained by a direct quote from her:  "My family is the biggest contributor of soft money to the Republican Party.  I have decided to stop taking offense at the suggestion that we are buying influence.  Now I simply concede the point.  They are right.  We do expect something in return.  We expect a return on our investment."
• Donald Trump lied in a claim alleging that the media doesn't cover terrorism because of "reasons":  "All over Europe, it's happening," Trump said.  "It's gotten to a point where it's not even being reported, and in many cases, the very, very dishonest press doesn't want to report it.  They have their reasons, and you understand that."  The Pulitzer Prize-winning fact-check site Politifact debunked this completely -- western media overreports terrorism as compared to media in other parts of the world, and in fact, stories about terrorist attacks dominate all sorts of media across the board in Europe and North America.
• Donald Trump lied again when he said that the homicide rate in the United States is the "highest it's been in 45 to 47  years," when in fact it peaked in the mid-1990s and has been declining ever since.
• Sebastian Gorka, deputy assistant to Donald Trump, stated that any criticism of Trump would be labeled "fake news":  "There is a monumental desire on behalf of the majority of the media, not just the pollsters, the majority of the media to attack a duly elected President in the second week of his term," Gorka said. "That's how unhealthy the situation is and until the media understands how wrong that attitude is, and how it hurts their credibility, we are going to continue to say, 'fake news.'"  Add to that a tweet from Trump himself stating that "any negative polls are fake news."
• Senator Elizabeth Warren was silenced by Mitch McConnell from reading a letter from Coretta Scott King calling into question the fitness for office of Jeff Sessions, nominee for Attorney General.  McConnell used a rule that stops a senator from criticizing another senator on the Senate floor, and the vote to shut Warren up went (predictably) along party lines.  "She was warned," McConnell said. "She was given an explanation.  Nevertheless, she persisted."  Warren shot back, "They can shut me up, but they can't change the truth."

It's easy to get overwhelmed.  We are so bombarded by crazy claims, bluster, egregious lies, and outright suppression of dissent that it's understandable why some people are choosing to turn off the news entirely.

In my opinion, that is an unacceptable response.  I know it's exhausting and demoralizing, but that is precisely why we need not to give up.  The doublespeak and accusations of "fake news" any time someone criticizes the President or his staff needs to be countered, immediately and hard.

Here are a few things I think are critical:

• Don't soft-pedal.  Label lies as lies, not "misspeaking" or "opinions" or (heaven help us all) "alternative facts."  I'm heartened to see headlines from major media now saying "President Trump Lies About ___________" -- it's about time they start labeling lies as such.  (And note that this means lies from both sides of the aisle.  Truth isn't one thing for one party and a different thing for the other.)
• Don't be afraid to take chances.  Don't be stupid about it, but realize that this is gonna be risky -- fighting the establishment always is.  Also, don't forget the adage that "all politics is local."  Join in protest marches.  Write letters.  Organize.  Keep it legal, and (when possible) keep it positive, but be willing to expend some of your time and effort during this critical period when we still have a chance to affect things.
• Let your views be heard.  When I started this blog seven years ago, it was in an attempt to find my voice -- a major and (initially) scary step from someone who is, to be honest, a socially awkward, shy introvert.  Find whatever forum works for you, whether it's blogging, social media, or standing in front of a filled auditorium firing up the troops.

So let's turn Senator McConnell's words into a rallying cry.  "Nevertheless, she persisted" -- this should become the motto of the resistance.  Let them continue with their lies and half-truths and attempts to silence the opposition -- nevertheless, we will persist.  Let them continue to demonize free speech and the press when they are criticized -- nevertheless, we will persist.  Let them continue to use their majorities in the House and Senate to circumvent our government's checks and balances, in the hopes that no one is watching or no one cares or no one is strong enough to speak up.

Nevertheless, we will persist.

I will end with a quote from one of my heroes, the incomparable Kenyan activist Wangari Maathai, winner of the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize for her work in reforming environmental policy and supporting women's rights in her home country.  "The only way to accomplish anything is to keep your feelings of being empowered ahead of your feelings of discouragement and inertia.  There is no one solution for everything, but there are many solutions to many of the problems we face.  There is no excuse for inaction."

Outrage saturation

Because I apparently don't have enough to worry about, as a teacher, with the approval in Senate committee of the amazingly unqualified Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education, yesterday I found out that Donald Trump has tapped Liberty University President Jerry Falwell, Jr. to lead a task force for reforming higher education.

Liberty University, which shares with Bob Jones University the moniker "The Buckle on the Bible Belt," has achieved notoriety among science-minded types for their staunch determination to teach young-Earth creationism as if it were actual, evidence-supported science.  They hire faculty on the basis of belief in YEC; an advertisement in the Chronicle of Higher Education said they were "seeking faculty who can demonstrate a personal faith commitment to its evangelical Christian purpose... compatibility with a young-earth creationist philosophy [is] required."  (Although it does make one wonder why anyone would want to teach there who wasn't a biblical literalist, a question I've also asked about the religious-belief requirement for working at Ken Ham's Ark Encounter.)

But about the scientific validity of what they're teaching, I can't put it any better than Richard Dawkins did:

If it's really true that the museum at Liberty University has dinosaur fossils which are labeled as being 3,000 years old, then that is an educational disgrace.  It is debauching the whole idea of a university, and I would strongly encourage any members of Liberty University who may be here, to leave and go to a proper university.

So the leader of this institution is the man who is being entrusted with the task of "reforming higher education."

Look, this goes beyond political affiliation.  There are plenty of conservative Republicans who are qualified to run the Department of Education and/or lead a reform of the American college system.  My contention is simply that Betsy DeVos is a doctrinaire know-nothing whose primary qualification seems to be that she gave big donations to the Trump campaign, and Jerry Falwell is a Christian extremist whose choice was almost certainly motivated by Trump's continual pandering to the religious right, who (for reasons that still escape me) continue in their support of him despite his lies, ego, narcissism, and long history of sexual assault and serial adultery.  (I am honestly looking forward to the next time a Trump supporter uses the term "values voter" or "family values," so I can laugh directly into their face.)

And it also brings up the question of what, exactly, Trump thinks needs to be reformed about colleges and universities.  About all I could find on that note are that Falwell believes there are "too many regulations" (this is becoming something of a mantra of this administration) and that colleges are "too liberal."

Well, Jerry Falwell is certainly the man to combat the latter.

But that's the pattern being established here; appoint people to government agencies whose aims apparently include destroying the agency they're leading.  Just two days ago, we had the announcement that Trump had appointed Kenneth Haapala, of the climate-denying, petroleum-funded "think tank" Heartland Institute, to be on the committee that oversees appointments to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

You read that right.  A guy who thinks that climate change is a hoax is going to be helping to lead the agency that monitors climate change.

If that wasn't enough, Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida has just drafted a bill to close the Environmental Protection Agency entirely.  Apparently appointing Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, a staunch fossil fuel advocate who is also a climate change denier, to the post of head of the EPA wasn't sufficient.  Gaetz writes:

Our small businesses cannot afford to cover the costs associated with compliance, too often leading to closed doors and unemployed Americans.  It is time to take back our legislative power from the EPA and abolish it permanently...  Today, the American people are drowning in rules and regulations promulgated by unelected bureaucrats, and the Environmental Protection Agency has become an extraordinary offender.

You have to wonder whether Trump's insistence on smashing the EPA might have something to do with his own businesses -- i.e., yet another conflict of interest.  Lest you think I'm engaging in idle speculation, here, take a look at this story that ran in The New York Times just yesterday. It describes a situation in South Carolina where Donald Trump, Jr. started a business venture called Titan Atlas Manufacturing, which tanked -- until Donald Sr. bailed him out by buying the failed business through a new company called "D. B. Pace" created solely for that purpose.  The problem is that Titan Atlas had allegedly been responsible for pollution and groundwater contamination at the site, and Donald Sr. and D. B. Pace are attempting to evade responsibility for the cleanup by claiming that the new company had nothing to do with the damage.

Guess which government agency oversees liability for corporate pollution?

Got it in one.

It's gotten to the point that I'm reaching outrage saturation.  I can barely even stand to look at the news lately, for fear of what new lunacy has been perpetrated by our leaders.

I have never before had so little faith that the people running our government have our best interest in mind, have any kind of foresight about what effects their actions will have, have the least idea what they are doing, or are actually even sane.

What I'm wondering about is damage control.  How can we minimize the havoc that will result from having dramatically unqualified people running things -- or appointing people unshakably hostile to the departments they're overseeing?  I wish I had a good answer to that.

Of course, at the moment, I'm having a hard time even answering the question, "Why am I not curled up in the corner of my office, weeping softly?"

Giving incompetence a chance

One of the most common things that has been said to me by Trump supporters is "give him a chance to govern."  And although I've been pretty vocal in my criticism of the President-elect, his rhetoric, and his decisions, no one would be happier than me if the prognostications of doom I'm hearing don't come true.  After all, the health of our democracy, our standing in the world, and the long-term survivability of the planet is far more important than any schadenfreude I would get from seeing someone I don't like fail.

But as far as giving people a chance, there are times when what a person says or does makes me disinclined to put them in the position of being able to do worse -- or simply to follow through on what they've already said.  I'm under no obligation to "give a chance" to someone who has shown no sign of competence.

Which brings me to Betsy DeVos.

I was appalled enough when she was first nominated for the position of Secretary of Education.  DeVos is a multi-millionaire whose staunch support of vouchers and charter schools in her home state of Michigan has been, by and large, an abysmal failure.  In an article written last month for the Detroit Free Press, Stephen Henderson has outlined the results -- a weakened public school system, and a host of charter schools whose lack of oversight has generated year after year of failure.  (One of them, Hope Academy of Grand River and Livernois, scored in the first percentile for academic performance in 2013 -- and despite of that, two years later had its charter renewed.)

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

I still held out a modicum of hope that her confirmation hearing would show that she wasn't as bad as she seemed.  That hope, unfortunately, was destined to be dashed.  Her testimony at the hearing was a rambling, disjointed birdwalk that at times left me thinking, "What did she just say?"  She showed herself to be unprepared -- no, worse, she showed herself to be entirely incompetent.  As an example, she revealed during questioning that she didn't know the difference between academic proficiency and academic growth, terms that any first-year teacher would know.

As should the Secretary of Education.

It'd be nice to think this was just a stumble.  We all do that sometimes -- choke on something we should have known, or do know, and afterwards think, "Wow, I sure screwed that up."  But the entire hearing was full of "stumbles" like this.  When Virginia Senator Tim Kaine asked her if she supported compliance with the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act as a requirement for receiving federal funding, she replied, "I think that's a matter best left to the states."

So wait a moment.  It's up to the states to determine if they'll follow a federal law?  One that mandates equal access to facilities and services for all students, regardless of disabilities?

That response, however, became a refrain.  On a question regarding guns in schools asked by Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut, she once again said, "I think that's best left for states and locales to decide."  Allow me to point out that Murphy represents the district in Connecticut where the Sandy Hook massacre took place.  When he understandably responded with incredulity, DeVos went into a bizarre description of how she knows of a school in Wyoming where they keep a gun to protect students from "potential grizzlies."

The response was so weird that #PotentialGrizzlies trended on Twitter for hours afterward.

Most of her testimony was a rather clumsy dance to avoid answering questions directly.  When given a long list of statistics regarding the failure of schools in Detroit, she responded that she thought Detroit schools were actually doing quite well.  Asked about her stance on science education, apropos of the teaching of evolution and climate change, she said, "I support the teaching of great science."

Well, forgive me for being a little dubious on that point, given DeVos's history of supporting groups like Focus on the Family and the Foundation for Traditional Values, both of which have worked tirelessly to eliminate the teaching of evolution in public schools.  Not to mention her own words, "Our desire is to confront the culture in ways that will continue to advance God's kingdom."

The supporters of the President-elect are saying, "Give her a chance."  Well, you know what?  I am under no obligation to "give a chance" to a person who has shown herself to be wildly unqualified for the job she's been nominated for.

Imagine if this was the approach taken in business.  A CEO interviews a candidate for a job, and the prospective employee refuses to give direct answers to questions, and in general shows himself to be a terrible choice for the job.  If the CEO didn't hire him, would you tell him, "You should have given him a chance?"

Worse still is the realization that the "chance" we're being asked to take here is to risk the education of millions of children.  We have no option at this point but to give Donald Trump a chance; after today, he'll be the president whether we like it or not.  We are not, however, required to give a chance to his incompetent nominees.

That's why we have confirmation hearings.

The end of the social experiment

In case I needed another reason to be glad that I'm only a few years from retirement, a few days ago President-elect Trump nominated Betsy DeVos to the post of Secretary of Education.

Betsy DeVos [image courtesy of photographer Keith A. Almli and the Wikimedia Commons]

It would be hard to find a less qualified person.  It is debatable whether DeVos has ever set foot in a public school.  She did not attend one as a child, nor did she send her own children there.  She does not have a degree in education, nor has she ever taught, even in a private school.  Her sole connection to schools is her near-rabid support of vouchers, which would funnel money away from public schools and into private (including religious) schools.

It's worse, however, than a simple lack of qualifications.  The Acton Institute, where DeVos is a board member, recently published a piece called "Bring Back Child Labor: Work is a Gift Our Kids Can Handle" which included passages like the following:

Operating out of a justified fear of the harsh excesses of “harder times,” we have allowed our cultural attitudes to swing too far in the opposite direction, distorting work as a “necessary obligation of adulthood,” a gift too dangerous for kids.  Working from these same distorted attitudes, the Washington Post recently published what it described as a “haunting” photo montage of child laborers from America’s rougher past. 

The photos surely point to times of extreme lack, of stress and pain.  But as Jeffrey Tucker rightly detects, they also represent the faces of those who are actively building enterprises and cities, using their gifts to serve their communities, and setting the foundation of a flourishing nation, in turn.

The author, Joseph Sunde, was the recipient of a firestorm of criticism over the article, so he changed the title to remove the "Bring Back Child Labor" part, and appended the following disclaimer:

Given the recent attention drawn to this post, permit me to clarify that I do NOT endorse replacing education with paid labor, nor do I support sending our children back into the coal mines or other high-risk jobs, nor do I support getting rid of mandatory education at elementary and middle-school ages.

No?  So what does "Bring Back Child Labor" mean?

What is the most maddening about all of this is that the majority of students I teach do work, and I see the stress that they deal with trying to juggle school, homework, job, extracurricular activities, and family obligations.  The idea that kids today are lazy whiners who need a return to some 1920s-style discipline is a convenient falsehood for those who want to gut the public school system.

DeVos and the Acton Institute are deeply invested in what amounts to defunding public education.  They focused for a time on Michigan, trying to push a "school choice" agenda there (an effort that was ultimately unsuccessful), showering huge amounts of money and gifts on Republican candidates in exchange for their support.  Detroit Free Press writer Stephen Henderson denounced DeVos as engaging in "a spending spree that would swell to $1.45 million in contributions to the party and to individual candidates by the end of July," adding that "in Michigan, children’s education has been squandered in the name of a reform “experiment," driven by ideologies that put faith in markets, alone, as the best arbiters of quality, and so heavily financed by donors like the DeVos clan that nearly no other voices get heard in the educational conversation."

Michigan Board of Education President John Austin, in an apt if somewhat mixed metaphor, said that "It’s like putting the fox in charge of the henhouse, and hand-feeding it schoolchildren...  DeVos’s agenda is to break the public education system, not educate kids, and replace it with a for-profit model."

And if you needed anything else, there's also a good likelihood that she's an Intelligent Design Creationist.  She grew up in the Calvinist Christian Reformed Church; her parents, Edgar and Elsa (Brockhuizen) Prince, are major donors to the Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council;  and her husband, Dick DeVos, came right out with "teach the controversy" bullshit when he was running for Michigan governor in 2006:

I would like to see the ideas of intelligent design — that many scientists are now suggesting is a very viable alternative theory — that that theory and others that would be considered credible would expose our students to more ideas, not less.

By the same argument, I suppose teaching students alchemy in chemistry class and astrology in physics class would "expose them to more ideas, not less."

And funny how whenever one of these clowns tries to ramrod ID or creationism into public school classrooms, they always say that "many scientists" are in favor of it without telling us who these scientists are.  "Cite your sources" apparently doesn't carry any weight in politics, for some reason.

So in the next four years -- assuming DeVos is confirmed, which is likely given the Republican majority in both the Senate and the House -- look for a further siphoning of funds away from public schools, more emphasis on draining resources and talent from poor inner-city schools, and more efforts to hamstring science education.  I've taught for thirty years, and I've weathered some ups and downs in that time, but I can't recall a point at which I felt so genuinely pessimistic about the future of public education.  In a purely selfish sense, I'm glad I'm retiring, probably some time in the next five years, and can get myself right out of this mess.  But it breaks my heart that this great social experiment in educating all children, regardless of socioeconomic status, race, or religion, may be coming to an end.